Happy New Year to everyone attending the Hotel and Tourism Online Marketing Management Program.
A quick reminder that the second module is running in Donegal Town Adult Education Centre next Tuesday at 09.30 and FAS Ballyraine Letterkenny on Wednesday at 10.00
Hopefully you have started to gather some ideas about the details of your Online Marketing Plan. CLICK HERE for a Sample Online Marketing Plan prepared for a Boutique Hotel.
(Note this E Mail is being distributed by the same E mail Generating Tool that you will be using during the course to send out E Zines to your customers).
I thought it might be useful to include some exerts from some of the questions that we have received since the first module.(By all means continue to E Mail in your questions and we will attempt to answer them).
- Remind me how I log onto the Website and Booking Engine?
Simply go to your website online, add admin to the end of the address and log in with your username and password (ie www.myhotelname.com/admin.) This gives you access to the back-end of your website (known as a Content Management System), and from here if you want to access the Booking Engine simply click on the second link down. In other words there is only one login for the Website and the Booking Engine now.
- ……when would you send out messages via E Mail and when by SMS/Text?
Good question. In simple terms SMS/Text is very invasive, and if you use it, it MUST contain something useful that the receiver truly finds beneficial. SMS is also an 'instant' form of communication, so is ideal for last minute/urgent items/products. SMS Messaging works best with 'themed' programs, and some very good ideas were proposed during the course ie Last Minute Showbreaks, Aer Arann Last Minute 'Fly and Stay' Breaks, Last Minute Theatre Breaks, Lasat Minute Spa Breaks.
Note the word 'Last Minute' in all these themes.
- …..i have found an E Mail list that I can buy. Will that be suitable? If not how should we build our own customer database?
Not really! You have a number of problems here, the largest is that customers on this database are unlikely to have signed up to say they want to receive your marketing material, and if you start to send out your E Mails or text messages you could be in breach of the Data Protection Act. In addition you risk annoying customers with unsolicited mail, and anyway if they havent said they specifically want the material they are unlikely to respond to it.
There is no substitute for slowly but surely building your own Customer Database! Many people of course propose collecting customer details online, and this is indeed done, but very few people are willing to give their contact details online, as they expect to be bombarded with junk mail for the rest of their lives. By far the best time to get customers to sign up to the program is at the reception desk, and probably the most popular method is a 'gold fish bowl' for customer to drop their business cards into. A pre-printed sign-up card next to the bowl for customers to fill out if they don’t have a business card is useful, as this card can also be left in the hotel rooms.
- I cant think what sort of offers we should make in our E Zines. What do you suggest?
Frequent Customer Schemes should pass the '30 Second Test' ie if one your Frequent Customers was met on the street and asked what benefits they have from being a member of the program, they should be able to list them in 30 seconds. Ie Clear, tangible benefits that only members of the Progam/Scheme can obtain. Ideally the program should not simply give something away that you might have sold anyway, but rather encourage customers to try something that they might not normally think of doing. In reality hotels will probably go in one of 2 directions. Either they will offer their Frequent Customers a series of unique, special events during the year ie Wine Tasting Evenings, Menu Testing Evenings etc, or they may simply elect to use their own inventory to make discounted offers, but in all cases the target is to offer something with the highest perceived value for the lowest possible cost.
By all means continue to E Mail in your questions and we will attempt to answer them.